In the manufacture of paper or tissue products such as facial tissues, bath tissues and paper towels, the base sheets are generally produced by depositing an aqueous suspension of paper making fibers onto a forming fabric, dewatering the suspension to form a web, drying the web and winding the dried web into a roll for subsequent conversion into a particular product. During manufacturing, most webs are adhered to a steam heated Yankee dryer and thereafter dislodged from the surface of the Yankee dryer by contact with a doctor blade (creping) prior to winding to improve the softness and stretch of the sheet.
In some existing processes, the final sheet traverses an “open draw” before being wound into rolls. Accordingly, the dried sheet is momentarily unsupported before being wound. In the case of creped tissue sheets, the sheet is dislodged from the creping cylinder and passed unsupported from the creping cylinder to a reel. This is true for both creped conventional (wet pressed) or creped through air dried (TAD) sheets. In addition, it is envisioned that this process could be utilized on a sheet that is not creped, similar to machine glazed (MG) grades. As known in the tissue manufacturing business, these unsupported runs or open draws are a source of sheet breaks and production delay time. To compensate, the tissue paper sheets are designed to have high strengths, particularly in the machine direction, in order to remain intact during manufacturing. However, high tissue strengths may negatively impact tissue softness, which is not desirable to the consumer.